If This Is A Blog Then What's Christmas?

It’s fine, you know fine.

No more, no less.

I recently had the pleasure/privilege of seeing a talk by the screenwriter John Logan (no relation to Johnny Logan, who won the Eurovision Song Contest a while back).

Is he any good? Well, he wrote this:

This:

This:

This:

And even this:

So yes, he’s about as good as it gets.

He was an excellent speaker: loquacious, informative, engaging, energetic and a strange mixture of humble and self-aggrandising (difficult not to be the latter with that CV).

But what can I pass on from my learnings?

1. Ego, credit, pissing contests… none of them matter. The only thing that matters is ‘Does it work?’

2. If you want to be a great writer you have to read the progression of drama from Aristotle to Shakespeare to Brecht to Shaw etc.

3. He did his degree then spent ten years shelving books in a library, writing plays that were not seen by many. Then he wrote his first screenplay, which was Any Given Sunday. So you can start late, so long as you’ve been paying your dues in the meantime.

4. Don’t be afraid of the big line. Write, ‘On my signal, unleash hell’, but get right behind it if you do.

5. The director is not God. Get in there and talk to the actors.

6. People only want to see Coriolanus because it has ‘anus’ in the title.

Thanks, John. I look forward to the next Bond Film.

On the face of it this is quite straightforward and run of the mill, but I can tell you from experience, if you are the dad of a little boy this hits you right in the bullseye of your heart and squeezes until you run to the nearest Sainsbury’s to buy a mini barbecue and some sausages*.

The culprits are the lovely Si and Di from AMV and Academy’s Tony Barry, who might well be lovely but I’ve never met him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Twk9Y19oXvw

*Obviously I wouldn’t really buy my sausages at Sainsburys. I like the bog standard ones from M&S.

Films improve greatly with the addition of Tom Selleck’s moustache (thanks, J):

This how ads should be (thanks, R):

Fella with a skull tattoo on his face, unsurprisingly on Jeremy Kyle (thanks, L):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Iv3g8ZLkYA

Darth Vader’s ‘Noooooooooo’ edited into other films.

The Great Gatsby as a video game (thanks, T).

Stunning hi-res astronomy images.

Laurel and Hardy dance to the Gap Band (thanks, C):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KL3mHPmNKRE

Here’s a Charlie Brooker article in The Guardian about Brand Ambassadors.

He makes a good point or three, but this subject is wider than Mr. Brooker’s exploration.

Evidently the way we feel about pretty much anything can be altered by its association with someone who uses or doesn’t use it.

With that in mind, last month, Abercrombie and Fitch went so far as to offer to pay reality TV ‘star’ The Situation not to wear their clothes.

“We understand that the show is for entertainment purposes, but believe this association is contrary to the aspirational nature of our brand, and may be distressing to many of our fans.”

That may have been a PR stunt, but it was based in truth: when someone you don’t like uses a product, it diminishes by the association.

So brands have to be very careful about who uses them, but the problem is they have very little control over this.

Perhaps you recall the hullabaloo about ten years ago when the huge dip in Levi’s’ fortunes was attributed to the fact that they were worn by sad middle-aged men such as Jeremy Clarkson. Levi’s had no choice over Clarkson’s decision to wear them, but the damage was great, and there was nothing they could do about it (except entirely overhaul their brand and stock at enormous expense). Did they have any say in the matter? No. Did they have to pay to solve the problem? Absolutely.

Going back to the Brooker article, the decision by Weetabix to use children as brand ambassadors has resulted in a long negative article in a national newspaper. Will that damage be offset by the positive effect of the ambassadors, or will it prove overall to be a mistake by Weetabix? I suspect the effect of what Charlie Brooker says will be negligible, but when you think about all the PRs, clients, agencies etc. that are employed to protect and promote a brand, the idea that they let mistakes like that slip through their fingers is unimpressive to say the least.

Then there’s the problem of real brand ambassadors such as Tiger Woods unexpectedly going off the rails to the supposed detriment of Gillette/Nike/etc. Again, the lack of control comes into play here: do the people who shave with Gillette products really care about Tiger’s behaviour? Would they choose Wilkinson Sword on the basis of that? What about Nike? Don’t they get to bask in the reflective glow of the rebellious outlaw that they so desperately used to covet?

Brands that feature in rap music have had a particularly tricky relationship with that situation. Back in the nineties Timberland tried publicly to distance themselves from the hip-hop scene by insisting that they sold working men’s boots not intended for the feet of urban rappers. And more recently the owner of Cristal Champagne insisted that he did not want his product to be associated with ‘bling bling’ (Jay-Z claimed that this was racist and responded by name dropping Krug Rose instead).

I suppose the conclusion is that you only get to have so much say about brands that sit in the public domain. Attempts to exert control and have a positive effect might end up doing the opposite, but help might also come from unexpected quarters.

The new Carling ad:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Tst_bB-Mi4

Fifteen-year-old Peugeot ad:

The answer is, as far as the idea is concerned, there is no difference.

In fact, the two ads are similar in many ways:

Black and white with a dash of colour.

Early shot of going into the eyeball.

Heavily stylised.

Black female singer to give the ad a bit of ‘soul’.

Central ‘characters’ who are complete prickweasels.

And end results that are truly, utterly, eye-bleedingly awful.

Plus ca change c’est la meme chose.

Chacho Puebla, one of the Kinsale jury members and executive creative director and partner of Lola / Lowe Madrid, said: “The work was the finest we’ve seen in the world this year.”

Um… Isn’t that the point of an international advertising awards show?

The My Little Pony gang explain Cheese:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngBD28UHL5A

This will cheer you up – guaranteed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDIQyWWL810

The trailer for the best film of all time (thanks, D):

And a wonderful news clip and apology.

How the New York Times Crossword gets made (thanks, P).

The Quantum World (thanks, P):

Beautiful Breakdancing (thanks, P):

101 produces some work!

And it’s kind of cool. I guess you can pull it up for having no idea, but then it’s clothes; we all know how they work and what they do. They’re all pretty much the same, especially if you’re a guy, so who cares? It’s all about the brand, so if you think this is cool then you’ll think the brand is cool. If you don’t, go to Prada like a decent human being:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgvqKHIdDmc

Creepy paedo gameshow host (thanks, J):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM2n4DPuDX0

Unintentionally sexual church signs (thanks, J & L).

Why capitalism is fucked (thanks, H).

Let’s go snowboarding (thanks, H):

Art of the Title: Emmy winner, Game of Thrones.

Best exit from a reality show, ever (thanks, J):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEuJ3dLLYco

Samuel L. Ipsum (thanks, J).